PHILADELPHIA -- Vince Carter didn't have his best game, but it was pretty good by most standards, and he had the stats to prove it. As he continues to try to carry the Nets into the postseason, he did everything well last night, except for the one thing that they desperately need him to do well, which is shoot the jump shot.

That being considered, it was all right there for him at Wachovia Center -- one shot for the lead with 70 seconds left, another shot for the tie with 17.9 on the clock. Both missed, and now the Nets have nothing to show for a very good effort other than another game lost in the standings.

A fourth-quarter offensive meltdown did them in this time, as the Sixers and Sam Dalembert won a grunt game and climbed back to .500 by scoring a gutsy 91-87 decision that dropped the Nets 1½ games behind eighth-place Atlanta in the Eastern Conference.

It's getting dimmer around here, and hard as it is for them to admit it, they know it.

"(Losing) two in a row right now really hurts us, because we're playing catch-up," said Carter, who had 27 points on 10-for-25 shooting, eight rebounds, five assists and three steals. "Right now it just puts us in a hole, and every game now is more important."

The Nets (29-41) may ultimately conclude that this was the most important game of
them all, because the Hawks -- who defeated Orlando last night to improve to 30-39 -- have nothing but sub-.500 opponents on their schedule for the rest of the month, and they may not be coming back anytime soon.

And in this crucial game, this was the only number that mattered after the Nets took a seven-point lead into the fourth quarter: They shot 5-for-21 with seven turnovers over the last 12 minutes.

"We had a really good third quarter," said Lawrence Frank, whose team had a 33-19 period to reverse a seven-point halftime deficit. "Our zone disrupted them a little bit, and Vince had a phenomenal attack. In the fourth quarter, they kind of flipped the script on us: Their pressure disrupted us, and then it came down to really the last three minutes for us."

The Nets trailed 86-85 with the clock under two minutes, and they managed to stay alive with two stops -- barely, as one included a pair of misses at the line by Dalembert.

So they had two shots at the lead. On the first, Carter missed an elbow turnaround over Andre Iguodala with 1:10 left. On the second, Josh Boone missed a lefty half-hook off a drive and shovel pass from Richard Jefferson with 39 ticks left.

Iguodala (28 points) then hit two at the line (88-85), but out of a timeout, the Nets caught a break. Carter sprung free and lined up an open shot from 24 feet for the tie -- but it clanged off the back rim.

Iguodala grabbed the rebound, and his two foul shots made it a two-possession game.

"They felt pretty good," Carter said of his two misses. "(Iguodala) backed off. I felt it was a good shot. Not that I second-guessed myself, but I felt I should try to get a little closer to the rim. I felt comfortable shooting it and then just missed them."

That was essentially true of the entire fourth period. After Carter owned the third -- he had accounted for 10 points, four boards and three assists, while holding Willie Green to 1-for-9 at the other end -- the Nets took a 77-70 lead into the last 10:50 minutes, and were feeling very confident they could score their first road win since Feb. 8.

But the offense disappeared at that point, never to return. Over the next seven minutes, the Sixers exerted pressure, the Nets went 1-for-9 with six turnovers, and nothing was coming easy except 3-point heaves late in the shot clock. The only field goal the Nets had was such a shot -- a 27-footer by Marcus Williams over a charging Dalembert (18 boards, five blocks), giving the Nets their final lead at 80-78 with 8:03 to play.

They lost the lead shortly after Carter had to take a seat after picking up his fifth foul at 7:12, and there was nobody left to pick up the slack, as Jefferson (3-for-15, 0-for-5 in the fourth period) had nothing going.

"It always comes down to that moment of truth and we just didn't convert," Frank said. "For both teams it was kind of an ugly team. Both teams struggled to make shots, we were running on fumes, but they made plays down the stretch."